


maybe I don't want heaven

by freefallvertigo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Angst, BAMF Clarke, Confused Lexa, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, background murphamy, octavia and raven are girlfriends, other cool shit like mermaids and gods
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-09 15:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7807060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those who die at sea awake in Atlantis, a paradisaical afterlife in which kind mermaids inhabit the tranquil waters and the dead know nothing but their own serenity. However, after Lexa drowns and reopens her eyes in the company of a mysterious Atlantean prisoner by the name of Clarke, she soon learns that not all is as it seems in paradise. Together, along with a small band of friends, they will work to uncover the alleged afterlife’s darkest secrets – and may just form a bond like no other in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe I don't want heaven

Lexa looked beautiful.

She stood at the bow of her best friend's yacht, as far from the party as she could possibly be without throwing herself overboard, and gripped onto the railing with white knuckles as the brisk evening breeze tousled her thick, brown hair into a state of perfect dishevelment. Eyes, greener and lusher than life itself, fixed themselves onto the setting sun; onto salmon pinks and warm oranges that faded into a hazy blue, a shade she knew would grow much darker once the waves claimed the sun yet again. The fabric of Lexa's white summer dress billowed soundlessly around her, like smoke urging to be carried away by the current of wind, and urging to carry her with it. Part of her wished it would.

She loved Anya, there was no doubt about that, but parties had never particularly appealed to her. Least of all parties in which the majority of people were complete strangers to her. Anya had recently gotten engaged, and it was her new fiancé's idea to throw a huge celebration on the yacht he had gifted to her as an engagement present, the aim being to mingle the joining families. There was just one problem with that. Anya's family was Lexa, and Lexa alone. So, despite a few semi-close friends of Anya's, the rest of the party-goers on board were the prior mentioned fiancé's family and friends. Lexa had no interest in them. After one brief encounter with Anya's soon to be step-parents, who were the epitome of over privileged snobs, she had hastily decided to abandon her efforts to mix.

Foolishly, she had hoped her long-time best friend wouldn't notice her slip away, what with a heaving throng of people surrounding her at all times. Yet it was not five minutes after her escape that her ears picked up on the sound of Anya's tall heels striding across the polished wood of the deck. Lexa saw Anya lean against the railing beside her in her peripheral. Nothing was said for a few seconds, but then-

"I'm sorry I ducked out." Lexa apologised, having known that Anya was waiting for her to speak first. "Your fiance is lovely. His family, on the other hand..." Lexa didn't want to insult Anya, so she allowed herself to trail off.

"I know. Trust me." Anya had a way of allowing a smile to seep into her voice without ever changing her expression. "But they're my family now, too."

Lexa glanced at Anya, and then immediately cast her eyes down to the ocean. The water, she observed, seemed to be growing wilder and livelier with the passage of time. She felt the boat swaying beneath her feet and tightened her grip on the railing as if to steady herself, wondering how far from the marina they had travelled. If it had been down to her, the party would have taken place on solid ground with an easy escape route. 

"Imagine that. A real family." Lexa muttered, her insecurities coming to light at last. She hadn't even intended to speak the words out loud. 

"Lexa..." Anya sighed sadly and turned to face her friend, who kept her eyes on the ocean. "Just because I'm getting married, that doesn't mean I'm going to forget about you. And _he_ is not going to replace you. Nobody ever could."

Lexa heard the earnestness in Anya's every word; heard just how much she meant what she said. Alas, the doubt remained. For as long as Lexa could remember, it had always been just her and Anya. She didn't remember her parents and she had no siblings to speak of, so when Anya had befriended her at the orphanage she'd grown up in, they became as close as sisters in no time. Anya, being considerably older than Lexa, had outgrown the orphanage a lot sooner. But still she never abandoned her. As soon as she got a job and an apartment, she took Lexa in and cared for her like she would a real sister; loved her more than she would a real sister. Now that Anya had another special person in her life, a person she was in love with and who she planned on spending the rest of her life with, Lexa feared she might end up losing her. Despite how happy she tried to be for Anya, she feared she wasn't needed anymore. Not by anybody.

"Okay." Is all she said. 

"I have something for you, anyway." Anya pulled a small black box out from her clutch. "I figure you'll want it more than me now."

"It's your engagement party and you're the one that brought a gift?" Lexa looked at her finally, and at the present in her hand. "I guess you've never exactly been typical."

Anya smiled and held out the box, which Lexa took tentatively. With her friend closely studying her face for a reaction, and Lexa curious as to what exactly Anya would have thought it fitting to gift her in the middle of her engagement party, she lifted the lid and peered inside. Lying on the soft cushion lining inside the box was a thin, silver chain. But the chain isn't what caused Lexa's face to break out into an endeared and instant smile in that moment, rather, it was what hung from the end of the chain that stood out to her. For it was a small, bronze gear, no larger than the tip of her finger. Of course, to anybody else, this might have seemed odd.

But not to them.

Growing up, more so when she was a lot younger, Lexa had developed a habit of picking up and collecting a variety of worthless trinkets and knick-knacks from the myriad of places she visited, and especially from the places she called home - if only for a short time. It was in Anya and Lexa's first apartment that she had found this, lodged between two floorboards in their bedroom. For weeks Lexa had tried to pull it out, but it was stuck good, and put up a hell of a fight against Lexa's tireless efforts. Then one day, just like that, Lexa pulled at it and it came loose in her hand. She kept it in a small wooden box with the rest of her junk, which she would open every night before bed, before proceeding to hold and examine every single object piece by piece and reminisce upon the story of each of them. When Lexa got older, she told Anya to throw out the box since it was worthless and she wasn't a kid anymore. After that, she'd soon forgotten all about it. Until then. 

"You kept this?" Lexa laughed and picked up the necklace, holding it out in front of her eyes to get a better look, though there was next to no sunlight at this point.

"How could I not? You spent the better half of a month trying to remove that thing from the floorboards." Anya was laughing at the memory now, too. "As cheesy as it sounds, when you moved out, holding it made me feel closer to you. It reminded me of our first home together after the orphanage, and of all the memories we've made over the years. But I feel like maybe you'll be in need of those reminders more than me from here on out. Just so you don't forget how much I care about you."

"Thank you, Anya." Lexa brushed her thumb over the gear. "I love it."

Anya held out her hand, a silent offer to help put the necklace on her friend. Lexa handed it over and turned around, holding her hair to one side as Anya fastened the clasp at the back of her neck and centred the pendant. Once she was done, they turned to face one another once more, and Lexa looked down at the chain.

"It looks perfect."

As soon as the word left her lips, the yacht tipped heavily and unexpectedly to one side, and had Lexa and Anya not been holding onto the railing they probably would have fallen. It was too long a moment before the boat righted itself again. Lexa's heart began to pick up pace as she turned her face towards the sky. Dark clouds had crept in unnoticed now that the sun had sunk beneath the sea. As for the water itself, the waves had become far more aggressive, beginning to pound at the side of the boat with ceaseless determination. Seconds later, Lexa felt the first droplets of rain land on her bare arms. She frowned. There wasn't supposed to be a storm tonight; Anya and her fiancé had made sure of it. Unfortunately, the weather didn't appear to reserve any intentions of abiding by the forecast, which became apparent as the sky abruptly unleashed relentless, drenching torrents of rain and the previously cool summer breeze became a howling wintry wind, shedding all gentle grace in favour of raw animosity. Lexa thought there was something strange about the sudden change in the atmosphere. Something unnatural. 

"We have to get back inside!" Anya shouted over the cacophonous storm, her words barely reaching Lexa's ears before being torn away and dissolved by the wind.

With the boat rocking unsteadily underfoot, and the fast falling rain slicking the deck and making it hazardous to take even a single step, Lexa and Anya clung still to the railing as they inched slowly back towards the cabin. Only, the metal bars they were clutching so desperately on to were now slippery and wet, their smooth surface lacking any kind of friction at all. Despite how adamantly Lexa tried to hold on, when the boat tipped once more, her hands may as well have been grasping at water. She fell. 

"Lexa!" Anya screamed for her friend.

Lexa's eyes were filled with terror as she slid across the length of the deck on her back, unable to do anything but watch as the foamy, white-blue water grew closer and closer still. Feet first, her slim body slipped right through the gap in the railing, but in one final attempt at self-preservation, she closed her hands around the bar. Her body jolted and her arms stung at the sudden halt, but Lexa was determined not to let go. The boat continued to sway unpredictably from side to side, as though trying to shake Lexa off like she were a bug. Already, she could feel her fingers starting to slip. With tears in her eyes, Lexa focused her blurry vision on Anya, who was watching the scene unfold with an expression of panic and dread. Somehow, Lexa knew she wasn't going to see her again. She knew she was going to die. 

Lexa tried to pull herself up, wanting desperately to prove her intuition wrong, but the rain water had made her hair and clothes and body much heavier; the drop in temperature had numbed her hands; the yacht was still rocking restlessly and violently. Lexa could do nothing as she felt her hands slip from the railing and her body plummet towards the ocean. She looked at Anya one last time. Anya looked right back. Then Lexa disappeared beneath a mountainous black wave. 

Shock. That's the first thing she felt after her body was submerged in water so cold it made her forget what warmth felt like. After a few feeble attempts at clawing towards the surface, her limbs went stiff, her body frozen like a block of ice. Or lead. At least, she sunk like lead, as an unbearably agonising pressure squeezed her chest - an impossibly tight embrace compressing her lungs and setting her insides on fire. The fire spread to her throat, and just like that, the cold didn't seem so cold anymore. In fact, she was burning, inside and out. Burning hotter than hell. Burning out.

Dying.  

In what felt like Lexa's final moment, disillusionment set in as she was faced with her own mortality. She was going to drown; her body lost at sea; her best friend left behind. Lexa drifted beneath the surface, and any clarity to her thoughts began to fade as the edges of her vision turned black and the overwhelming urge to gasp for air took over. She saw something in the water, something that shimmered and glowed, but at this point her mind was all but detached from her body and she was unable to process anything save for the rush of cool water flooding her insides. It didn't even hurt anymore. Perhaps not a peaceful demise, but in those final seconds, it was at least painless. 

Death held Lexa in its lapis blue arms, dragging her further and further from the surface, far from the world she knew. Her eyes fluttered open as she exhaled for the last time, only to find herself face to face with the shimmering white light, like a tear in the ocean itself. And those arms around her were not death's, but something else. Somebody else. However, Lexa's thoughts and memories and consciousness were already gone, and then she was, too. 

///

Clarke sat silently in the darkness.

With her back to the cold, uneven stone wall and one arm slung across the knee she had pulled up to her chest, she listened to the sounds of the prison. Those who had managed to fall asleep were breathing heavily, snoring, whimpering, turning restlessly. In a place of perpetual darkness, nobody truly knew when the right time to sleep was, so any moments in which unconsciousness beckoned were welcomed deeply. Even nightmares, Clarke had decided, were better than her current reality. And there were plenty of them to be had. 

Some who weren't sleeping conversed quietly with the prisoners in adjoining cells. Though, with only one solid wall and three of thick steel bars, they better resembled cages. Clarke tuned in to some of the conversations, not surprised to find that most of them revolved around past lives, around the people they loved and the places they missed and the world they left behind. Clarke deemed it a futile task to dwell on such bitter-sweet memories. Remembering wouldn't help their current situation; remembering would only hurt. Clarke didn't want to hurt anymore. In fact, most of her just wished it would all end already. She was sick and tired of feeling helpless, and she wanted nothing more than for it to be over. 

As she absently picked at a loose thread in the tear of her jeans, she heard the boy in the cell next to her stir and watched him sit up, blink, and groan as he processed his surroundings and returned begrudgingly to real life. 

"Have a nice dream, Murphy?" Clarke teased, voice hoarser than she had anticipated.

In comparison to Clarke, who had been stewing in her cell for three weeks, Murphy had only been down there for two. She recalled the day he was dragged in, kicking and screaming and cursing like a sailor, sobered instantly of the Atlantis effect the second they sealed him inside his cage. She knew then that they had at least one thing in common: their anger. Many of the people locked up down there went quietly and without a fight, some still clinging desperately to the idea that they may yet return to Atlantis, and that one day soon they'd go back to the life of blissful ignorance they had grown accustomed to. That was what that place could do to you. It could blind you to the truth that lay exposed before your very eyes, or crawl inside your head and pump you full of whatever ideas and notions it wanted to. 

Clarke wasn't immune to that. Actually, she'd been just like everybody else when she'd first arrived: a mindless zombie with a permanent, dumb smile plastered on her face. It had taken a lot of willpower and a hell of a lot of fight to accept what was really going on, and to resist yielding to the temptations that awaited her at every turn and every corner. Not that it actually helped her any in the end.

"I still maintain that this is the dream." Murphy sat with his back to the bars separating his and Clarke's cells. From such a short distance, Clarke was clearly able to see the dirt and grease matting Murphy's hair together in unflattering clumps. She daren't even imagine what her own, now filthy, blonde hair looked like. "The truth is, right now I'm at home, laying in bed with the TV blasting some god awful horror movie that's messing with my dreams. I figure it's only a matter of time before I wake up."

"That so?" Clarke adjusted her position so that she was now leaning against the very bars Murphy was. "But if you wake up, you'll never see my pretty face again."

Murphy breathed a laugh. "No offence Clarke, but if that's the price I have to pay, I'll be glad to see the last of you. Anything to get out of this place." The more he spoke, the more his tone veered away from mild amusement and headed further towards dejection. 

Clarke nodded, even if Murphy couldn't see her. They could joke all they liked about these things, but it usually always ended up taking a darker turn. As they'd soon learned being trapped in that place, dry humour and forced laughter wasn't actually a cure for every problem in the world. Much as they wished it was. So, Clarke made the decision then to drop the banter in favour of a topic she'd been meaning to ask about for some time, but had been unsure about whether or not it was a good idea to bring it up around Murphy. He could be pretty volatile, after all.

"What about Bellamy?"

Murphy stilled. "What _about_ Bellamy?"

Bellamy was a a boy of Atlantean blood, one of many who worked under the command of the King of Atlantis, Thelonious Jaha. Atlanteans who did not pertain to the line of royalty lived out their days as servants to the dead. Clarke thought it strange that said servants, for the most part, took pleasure in their work. They were happy to live and die in service of King Jaha and the undead inhabitants of Atlantis. Bellamy and his sister, Octavia, were different. Clarke met Octavia first. She, along with a fireball of a girl by the name of Raven, befriended Clarke soon after she arrived and helped her out of her daze. Were it not for them, she'd probably still be just another slave to the grand illusion that was Atlantis. She hadn't met Bellamy until her second week in prison. Octavia sent him to reassure her that they were doing everything they could to get her out, and that they wouldn't forget about her.

He visited frequently during that second week, filling her in on everything that was going on above ground and doing what he could to lift her spirits. His position as a prison guard turned out to be especially useful, more so given the fact that he would sneak in water and small amounts of food. During his visits, Clarke couldn't possibly help but notice the not-so-subtle affectionate interactions between Bellamy and Murphy, poorly masked behind sarcastic remarks and casual concern. Apparently, they had known one another before Murphy was imprisoned, and had grown as close as they dared allow themselves to.

But on the third week, his visits suddenly stopped. No warning, no explanation, he simply walked out one day and never came back. Clarke knew it had affected Murphy; it became evident in the way his mood dropped and he became more prone to fits of anger. But it had also affected Clarke, since his visits were the only thing giving her hope, and she liked to know that Raven and Octavia were out there doing something about her situation. Until now, neither of the two had even spoken Bellamy's name. 

"Would you really leave him behind?" Clarke asked. She thought she might be crossing a line, and though she knew it might not do well for her to alienate her only remaining friend, curiosity finally got the best of her.

Murphy scoffed. "He's the one that left me - _us_ behind. We've been alone down here for a week, now." His voice was laced with bitterness. "He doesn't care about me and he doesn't care about you, so why bother wasting another breath talking about him?" He rose to his feet and made for the other side of his cell, opting instead to lean against the outer cell wall with his elbows resting on the flat steel crosspiece running along the length. 

"We don't know that." Clarke objected. She, too, stood and faced Murphy. "We have no idea what could have happened topside. For all we know, he got caught."

Murphy evidently had nothing more to say on the matter. He kept his lips sealed shut and his face turned away from Clarke, as if trying to hide his eyes from her. Eyes, after all, said all that words could not. Clarke sighed and backed away from the cell wall. When Murphy got in one of his moods, it was best to leave him to it. Clarke had intended to reside to the corner of her cell, where a thin and dirty blanket served as her bed, with the aim of trying to get some shut eye. But before she could take a single step in that direction, a blinding white light and a sound like waves lapping over one another and crashing against a hard surface had her pinned against the wall. Two thirds of her cage had suddenly been taken up by a tear in the fabric of space, so bright she physically couldn't see. The prisoners erupted in a chorus of confused shouts, and those who had been sleeping instantly awoke from their slumber. 

Seconds later, the light was gone, and so was the sound. 

The clamour of voices remained, but Clarke barely even registered that when she looked down at the floor of her cell and saw - lying face up in the centre of a shallow puddle of water - a girl. Clarke blinked. Murphy forgot he was angry and rushed to the side of the cell, speechless upon seeing what it was that Clarke saw. They exchanged an incredulous glance, before returning their gazes to the girl. She was drenched from head to toe, her previously brown hair now so damp and dark it almost looked black, especially against her deathly pale skin. Clarke's eyes took in the girl's blue lips and limp body, lingering for a beat on the bronze gear hanging from a chain around her neck. 

Murphy looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not his own eyes were deceiving him. "Is that-"

"An opportunity." Clarke finished.

In an instant, she was kneeling at Lexa's side, two fingers pressed against her neck. She waited. Nothing. Thankfully, Clarke knew exactly what to do in this situation. Perhaps her years at med school hadn't gone to waste after all. She placed the heel of her left hand at the centre of the girl's chest, rested her right hand on top of that, and began a series of regular compressions. As she silently counted to thirty, in the back of her mind she started to question why and how the girl had materialised in the prison, rather than in the welcome bay like everybody else who arrived in Atlantis. Something must have gone wrong somewhere along the way. If she could get the girl breathing again, she might get some answers.

"Thirty."

Yet again, Clarke pressed her fingers against Lexa's neck. Ten seconds passed and still no pulse. She swore. Then, after tilting her head back and pinching her nose closed, Clarke took a breath and placed her mouth over Lexa's. She gave two one-second breaths to the girl before resuming compressions. Murphy watched Clarke's efforts with wary anticipation, but all Clarke saw was the girl lying beneath her, and all she heard were her own heavy breaths. Finally, just as Clarke counted the twentieth compression, Lexa jolted to life and coughed up several lungfuls of water. Clarke released a relieved sigh and rolled her onto her side so that she wouldn't drown all over again, gently patting her back as she threw salt water up all over the floor of the cell. But Lexa was still ice cold, her body shivering violently and the healthy colour showing no intention of returning to her skin. Clarke would need to get her warm. 

Once Lexa had nothing left to choke up, she lay on her back once more, panting heavily. After she'd slowly peeled her eyes open, Clarke got a shock at how vibrantly green they were, unsure as to whether that was to do with the rest of her body lacking normal pigmentation or if that was how they looked all the time.

"Rise and shine, bright eyes." 

Now that Lexa's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and now that her thoughts weren't racing erratically inside her head, she fixed her gaze on the blonde leaning over her. Grimy skin, tears in her jeans and shirt, surprisingly intact leather jacket, unwashed hair matted together. And, Lexa noticed, an undeniable fierceness in her eyes, the colour and intensity of which brought to mind the very same lethal waves she had just drowned beneath. _Drowned_... Lexa had drowned. Hadn't she?

"I drowned." Lexa said dumbly. She hadn't quite gathered her thoughts yet, and both her mind and body were still in shock. "I mean... Did I drown? Did you save me?" As she spoke, the chatter in her teeth made it difficult for her to properly enunciate her words. 

"In a way." 

Lexa's dress was soaked through and almost transparent, clinging to her slender frame. Clarke actively avoiding allowing her eyes to linger, which even a dazed and confused Lexa was able to pick up on. She looked down at herself and, mildly mortified, immediately wrapped her arms tightly around her body as if in an attempt to over up. If she found that awkward, she definitely wasn't going to appreciate what followed.

"You need to get out of that dress." Clarke stated plainly. "There's a dry blanket in the corner of my cell, you can use that."

"Cell?" It was then that Lexa finally took the opportunity to take in her environment. Indeed, she was surrounded on three sides by the bars of a cell, and the room beyond seemed to stretch for a mile, appearing less like a prison and more like a dungeon. The cells looked like cages, and there were a lot of them, most occupied by similarly dirty and unkempt prisoners. She noticed that those in her proximity were watching her closely, especially the mean looking boy directly next to Clarke's cell, whose silence made her uneasy. Lexa suddenly felt sick all over again. "Where are we? What's going on?" 

Clarke had hoped to skip the panic and confusion, since she knew the Atlanteans would be looking for her and that they were pressed for time, but clearly she wasn't going to get off that easy. Instead, Clarke made the decision to leave out some of the scarier, more panic-attack inducing details, that she might speed things up a little. 

"You drowned and now you're here, breathing, with a beating heart. Thanks to me." Clarke spoke quickly. "I brought you back to life, kind of, but now it looks like you have hypothermia. If you don't get out of that soaking wet dress then you might just die all over again, so why don't you save any more questions for later?" Perhaps a little harsh, but Clarke wasn't going to lose any sleep over it, and if it saved the girl's life then she didn't really see a problem.

Lexa looked up at Clarke with a pair of wide, bewildered eyes, and for a second Clarke almost felt bad. Almost.

"Come on, bright eyes." Clarke rose to her feet and held her hand out for Lexa, who reluctantly grabbed onto it as she struggled to a standing position, if only because her legs weren't quite functioning properly yet. Clarke knew this and helped walk Lexa slowly towards the blanket. "Do you need help getting out of that dress?"

Lexa scoffed in response. She was afraid and she was confused and she had no idea where she was or who these people were; the last thing she was going to do was to let one of them undress her. Luckily, Clarke could take a hint. She turned around to grant Lexa her privacy. However, as Lexa's trembling hands fumbled with the zip at the back of her dress, Clarke noticed that the man in the cell to the left was watching her with a toothy grin. Clarke rolled her eyes.

"Hey, pervert." She took a step towards the bars, reached through them in order to grab onto his collar, and yanked him so hard and fast towards her that the instant his head smacked noisily against the steel rods he was knocked out cold. Clarke loosened her grip on his shirt and he slumped to the ground. No doubt he'd give her one hell of an earache when he came to, but she figured it was kind of worth it. Clarke waited for another moment, arms folded and foot tapping restlessly, but she was starting to run out of patience. By now they must have known she was down there. "Are you done yet?"

"Yes."

Clarke turned around. The blanket wasn't massive, so it cut off at Lexa's knees, but it would at least cover her torso and thighs and keep the majority of her warm. Clarke sighed at the state of this girl; dripping wet, freezing cold, and absolutely terrified. She started to suspect that the blanket might not have been enough, what with it being paper thin. Lexa still looked like a walking corpse. 

"You're not gonna like this." Clarke predicted. "Frankly, neither am I. But if you don't want your heart to give out, you're going to need to raise your temperature, and with the little resources we have down here the only option I got is thermal equilibrium. In other words, we're gonna have to hug it out."

"Excuse me?" Lexa, who was already confined to the corner, leaned even further away from Clarke. "I am _not_ hugging you. You need to tell me what's going on, and how I can get out of here." Lexa desperately wanted to see Anya and make sure she was okay, disregarding her own well being amidst her concern for her friend. As curious as she was about how it was at all possible for her to have drowned and miraculously ended up locked in a cage with some girl, she'd sooner get out than get answers. Though she guessed said girl wasn't exactly in a position to let her out anyway. 

"What good is talk when you're dead?" Clarke needed to figure out a way to get her to cooperate, and since the whole blunt and apathetic thing wasn't exactly working out for her, she opted instead for a slightly different approach. "Look, I get that you're confused, and things will be explained to you very soon, but right now my main concern is saving your life. Look at yourself. You're white as snow, you can hardly stand, and I'm willing to bet you can scarcely feel your hands. Right? If you want to get out of here alive, I'm afraid you're just going to have to listen to me." This time when Clarke spoke, she did so with a much softer tone of voice, and made out as though she had only Lexa's best interests at heart. It was partly true that she reserved some of the same interests as Lexa, given that she really didn't want her to drop dead right there and then, but mostly she figured she could use her to get a message to her friends. 

Lexa looked Clarke up and down suspiciously. "What are you, a doctor?"

"Something like that."

While Lexa still maintained her reservations about her new cellmate (she was in prison, after all), that didn't mean she was about to let her own stubbornness kill her. Plus, she really did have numb fingers, and she was shivering uncontrollably. Eventually, Lexa nodded, which Clarke took as a green light. She closed the distance between herself and Lexa, and only when they were little more than a few centimetres apart did things truly start to get awkward. Lexa, who was thankfully still wearing underwear, allowed the blanket to cling to her back from her shoulders as she opened her arms and wrapped them around Clarke.

"You need to, uh, you need to put your arms beneath my jacket. Like this."

Clarke couldn't bring herself to meet Lexa in the eye as she took a hold of her arms and moved them from over to under her jacket, so that there was less material separating their skin. Then Clarke had to wrap her own arms beneath the blanket and around Lexa's bare back. Touching her skin was almost painful given how cold it was, and with their chests pressed together, Clarke couldn't suppress the shiver that came over her. On the bright side, they didn't actually have to look at one another, as both their chins were resting on the other's shoulder. However, Clarke then made the mistake of looking at Murphy, who shot her a mischievous wink. She mouthed silently at him to fuck off, at which he simply laughed and returned to the floor of his cell. 

"So, I have a question." Clarke started, hoping that continuing their conversation might ease the tension. "Do you remember what happened to you? How you ended up here?"

She felt Lexa shake her head.

"I remember everything being calm. The water, the sky, the boat. It was even warm - a normal summer's day." Lexa explained. "But then just like that, everything changed. A storm rolled in out of nowhere and the temperature dropped unnaturally fast. These massive waves tipped the boat and I fell in the water. I don't recall much after that." She frowned as she tried to recollect the specific details. "There was a light. And... somebody had a hold of me. They were taking me towards it. Towards the light."

Nothing about Lexa's story stood out to Clarke as any different from her own experience, and it certainly didn't explain why she had ended up in the prison. So if nothing had gone wrong on her end, it must have been Atlantis. Clarke hadn't even known that was possible. Since when did Atlantis experience technical difficulties? Then, surprising Clarke with the fragility of her voice, Lexa asked a question she wasn't prepared to answer.

"Am I dead?" She whispered.

"I..." Clarke found herself momentarily at a loss for words. "I don't know."

Without warning, a heavy door at the far end of the cell block was yanked open with a sharp squeal of rusty metal, and Clarke knew instantly that they had come for Lexa. She pulled away and, figuring she had about twenty seconds before the guards reached her cell, began to talk non-stop at Lexa.

"Listen to me, you're probably going to wake up again and there'll be people trying to convince you that this didn't happen; that you never met me. Ignore them. This is real. This happened. Whatever bullshit they tell you about Atlantis being a paradise-"

"Wait, Atlantis?"

"- isn't true. It's just propaganda. I need you to find a girl called Raven, wears a bright orange bomber jacket everywhere she goes, dislikes pretty much everyone she meets. Tell her you saw me - you saw Clarke - and I sent you to her. She'll help you." As Clarke rattled off word after word, she was entirely aware of the impending footsteps growing louder and closer. She could see that Lexa was more confused now than she had been before, but she had no time to explain. "Just tell her I'm still down here. I'm not dead yet. Murphy, too."

Finally, the guards stopped outside the cell. There were four of them, and Lexa's gaze was immediately drawn to the abundance of tattoos adorning their skin that seemed to glow a pale, silver colour. That same hue was also mirrored in their irises. Very quickly, everything was becoming far more surreal to Lexa, who struggled to process Clarke's words as the guards worked to unlock the cell door. 

"Oh, and before I forget, don't drink anything pink. And _don't_ trust the mermaids."

"Mermaids?"

The cell door swung open at last and Lexa felt two sets of hands dragging her back by her shoulders. She struggled in vain, for they were far stronger than she had anticipated, and when a firm hand tilted her head to one side that another may inject some unknown serum into her neck, she could do nothing but wince and allow it. The second the syringe was removed, she began to feel drowsy, and once more she became vaguely aware of her own consciousness being stolen from her. In her last few seconds of clarity, Lexa met Clarke's grave eyes through the bars of her cell, and watched her lips move out of sync with her voice as she said one final thing:

"Good luck, bright eyes."

**Author's Note:**

> The bronze gear Anya gifts Lexa is supposed to be a nod to the cog/gear Lexa wears on her forehead in the show, if that wasn't clear. Also, I figure some of you might be a lil confused upon reaching the end of this chapter. That's cool, ur supposed to be. Things will become clearer. Promise.


End file.
